Warp and Weft
by moonlighten
Summary: Garak settles in to play the long waiting game that he hopes will bring Julian back to him. (Set post-canon, and after the events of the book 'Enigma Tales'.) Garak/Bashir
1. Chapter 1

**Note:** I recently finished watching DS9 for the first time on Netflix, and then read A Stitch in Time, The Crimson Shadow, Section 31 and Enigma Tales very shortly thereafter, needing more of Julian and Garak's story. As soon as I finished Enigma Tales, I wanted to write this, as the ending of that book was such a perfect mix of devastating and hopeful!

It's set post-canon, and after the events of Enigma Tales, when Bashir, who is catatonic, is left in the care of Castellan Garak and his staff.  
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It has been five days since Garak last visited Bashir.

Though, for the first time since Ezri Dax delivered Bashir into his hands for safe-keeping, he hasn't been kept from his side by the escapist industry and wilful avoidance of make-work, but the real work of a castellan. Five long days spent holed up with a delegation of Bajoran representatives, discussing war crimes trials and extradition treaties, and coming no closer to agreeing on the details of any of them.

Five long, arduous days, and nothing substantial has changed, either outside this room or within it.

The air is still tainted by a faint antiseptic tang and the metronomic bleeping of the medical monitoring equipment, counting out heart and respiration rate; reassuringly steady but nonetheless jarring in the otherwise silent space.

The same still-life tableau is arranged in front of the window, but Garak's gaze skims over it towards the biobed and then the table beside it, finally resting on the vase of _mela_ lilies set there. They're wilting now, their broad, white petals crinkled and browning at the edges: the only sign that any time has passed. That the room and its inhabitant weren't placed in a stasis field when he left, like a starship morgue.

That association chills him, and he says, "I'll bring fresh flowers," just to hear the sound of his own voice.

He gets no response, but then he hadn't expected one.

"I thought we could continue reading Sayak's book, if you have no objections," he forces himself to continue. Forces himself, too, to turn and walk towards the window.

This moment is always the hardest; will likely _always_ be the hardest. The initial moment wherein he has to look, confirm, and admit that Bashir is also unchanged, still lost to him, trapped inside the intractable prison of his own body and mind.

He puts it off a little while longer.

"Ah, the stowaway," he says instead to Kukalaka, picking the bear up from the windowsill where it had been carefully placed in the exact same spot where Pulaski had left it: one shiny, plastic eye looking out over the city, the other fixed on its owner. "I'm afraid there may be some delays in arranging your citizenship, my small friend. I've been kept very busy of late."

He runs his hands over the toy, the fine scales on his fingertips catching _here_ , on stitches made from a different, thicker thread than the rest, and _there_ , on scorched patches where the synthetic fur had melted and then reformed into rough spikes as it cooled. Scars from the destruction of the original DS9, perhaps? Frankly, it's a wonder that the bear survived at all.

He muses on the possible avenues of this miraculous escape for far too long, dreaming up ever more elaborate scenarios until the realisation hits that he's taking distraction to sublimely ridiculous levels. It's past time to face reality. To face Bashir.

Garak looks at him obliquely, out of the corner of his eye. First, at the slow rise and fall of his chest, then the sag of his chin, and then, eventually, his face. Bashir's eyes are dull and unfocused, but the shifting light of the dying day streaming in through the window makes shadows play across his features – ebbing and flowing beneath the curve of his cheekbones and the bow of his lips – lending a deceptive animation to his blank expression.

Just as he did on his last visit, he places Kukalaka on Bashir's lap, and then lifts his hand, meaning to settle it on the bear's head. Bashir's long fingers – those clever, surgeon's fingers – droop bonelessly, as limp and lifeless as an empty glove. Garak shifts his grip and squeezes them, just a little too hard. Bashir doesn't try to pull away, or complain, or even wince. He doesn't react to the pressure in any discernible way. Likely, he doesn't even feel it.

Garak lets Bashir's hand drop, takes the seat at his side, and opens his book at the page he'd marked.

"Now, Almar had fallen into the clutches of his enemies when we left him," he says. "I hope you're as eager as I am to discover whether or not he escapes."

That particular stopping point had been born half from necessity, half from design. Garak had been reading to Bashir for so long that his throat had grown dry and felt abraded, and his eyesight had begun to blur. He could probably have soldiered on, eked out his voice for the last few pages of Almar's tale, but by pausing where he did, just as the story was reaching its denouement, might have served to irritate Bashir. Might have roused in him a desire to hear how it ends, and thus built his anticipation for Garak's next visit.

It was a slim hope, unrealised, but Garak has precious few tactics he can bring to play in this waiting game he's decided to engage in, and he's determined to use all of them.

And reading is still one of the strongest, he thinks, so he continues on through the climax of Almar's tale, and the entirety of Taselle's, pausing every so often to wet his mouth with _kanar_.

He's barely made a start on the legate's tale when a soft noise draws his attention to the doorway behind him.

The nurse standing there cants her head in a deferential nod. "Sorry to disturb you, sir," she says, "but it's 22:00. Time to put Doctor Bashir to bed."

The news honestly surprises Garak. He'd been so focused on Sayak's words that he hadn't noticed the time slipping away; the sun going down and the room's lights coming up.

"Of course," he says, getting hurriedly to his feet. "He needs his sleep."

"Rest is a great healer," the nurse says sagely, though it seems to Garak that, if that old adage were true, then Bashir would have come back to himself – to Garak – long since.

He murmurs his assent, nonetheless, and the nurse bustles forward to check on Bashir's vital signs – good, it appears, judging by her small smile – and then prepare him to be moved to the biobed.

When she plucks Kukalaka from Bashir's lap, something about the sight of the bear in her hands unsettles Garak in a way he cannot name or even put his finger on, and, without thinking, he reaches out and touches her arm, stilling her.

She frowns at him, puzzled. "Sir?"

"I think he should keep the bear with him," Garak says, and the words feel right even if the nurse looks unconvinced.

She turns her frown on Kukalaka, and her nostrils flare as if in distaste, perhaps thinking the worn, battered bear unsanitary, or else wondering why he'd ask that a grown man be put to bed with a toy.

Pulaski's parting advice floats to the forefront of Garak's mind; advice that Parmak had reiterated, so it seems that it's accepted practice in Cardassian medicine, too, and thus likely to satisfy the nurse.

"He needs familiar things around, to help remind him of who he is," he says. "And there's nothing more familiar to him here than that bear."


	2. Chapter 2

Even though the talks with Bajor had been largely unproductive, there were sufficient reports produced in their wake that they could have filled Garak's days from beginning to end had he read them with the diligence that they, perhaps, deserved. And each of those reports had their own petitioner, eager to inveigle themselves into what little free time he possessed to plead their case and try to persuade him that their specific point of view and particular special interests were absolutely essential to the negotiations and deserved to be promoted above all others.

Representatives from the military were his most frequent visitors, and though their sabre-rattling has become more subdued since Telek's arrest, there was still an undercurrent of threat thrumming behind each diplomatic word and politic smile: _If these trials are going to happen, you won't escape them, sir. If we're going to fall, we're going to make damn sure to take you down along with us._

As Garak had long since made his peace with that possibility, and consequently lost all fear he might have had of it, the endless procession of legates and guls should have been easy to dismiss. But their meetings dragged on and recursively on, nonetheless, because Garak was distracted by the constant, niggling worry that he was neglecting Bashir once more, and his thoughts kept drifting away from his office and up to the top floor of his official residence and the sickroom there.

This time, over a week passes before he can follow them.

He brings flowers, not only to fulfil his promise, but also as an apology. No _mela_ lilies this time – Garak has always considered them staid and funereal – but a profusion of vibrant flowers picked fresh from the small, sad patch of earth which purports to be the residence's garden, and a bundle of dried desert grass to provide height and texture.

He arranges them carefully, wanting to create in microcosm the transient beauty of a Cardassian spring. He alternates the pink, star-shaped _isca_ with the blue _caroci_ , then bunches them together in clusters, like with like, to ape their natural growing patterns. The yellow _nhemeni_ , meant to bring a vivid splash of colour, look dull in contrast to the other blooms – their colour fading just as the all-too-brief season that birthed them is already fading – so he discards them.

He places the dried grass behind the flowers, fanned out to frame the whole, and then steps back to appraise his handiwork.

And concludes that he needn't have bothered with any of it. The arrangement looks so messy and disorganised that he might as well have thrown the flowers in at random and called it done, and the blue-green grass seems to clash horribly with the wall behind it. It's painted in an insipid shade, but Bashir's medical team had insisted on it. Garak would have preferred something brighter, more cheerful, but the doctors trotted out so many studies and scientific papers that concluded that pale green was the most calming and restorative of all colours that Garak eventually – if reluctantly – surrendered to it, out of concern for Bashir's health.

He would also prefer to pluck the flowers from their vase, but stays his hand. He's in danger of procrastinating again, and he still has his duty to perform.

Despite Garak's request of the nurse, Bashir's arms are empty, Kukalaka having been placed on the windowsill once more. Garak is assiduous in his efforts to avoid looking at Bashir directly as he relocates the bear to its proper spot on his lap, but their eyes meet accidentally when Garak straightens up from his crouch in front of the man.

It is earlier in the day than Garak has ever managed to visit Bashir before, the sun still high in the sky, and it gilds Bashir's irises to a warm, honeyed tone. His pupils have shrunk down to tiny pinpricks. There is no recognition there.

Garak hurriedly takes his customary seat, and begins reading without preamble.

The legate's tale is more complex than the others, each new page containing a revelation or fresh evidence that seems to contradict everything that has come before. As the story progresses, it seems ever more impossible that the legate is guilty of either of the murders he stands accused of.

It is only in the closing paragraphs that the tale twists askew, revealing that the first murder had indeed been committed by the legate's wife and her lover in such a fashion as to throw suspicion immediately upon the legate. They had used the legate's own weapon, something which made Garak suspect them from the start; a man as intelligent and methodical as the legate appeared to be would surely never make such a damning mistake.

He would, it transpires, were he so enraged by the discovery of his wife's affair that he'd forget all reason and forego all rationality in pursuit of his revenge. That he targeted the wrong man is seemingly an unimportant enough detail that it is disclosed only in an aside.

Such is the way of enigma tales, and Sayak is a traditionalist when it comes to the form. But, still, for a moment Garak had been fooled into thinking this might be the first manifestation of the change Professor Natima Lang had predicted. That Cardassia has changed enough that there may one day be true innocence in these tales, not simply different types of guilt, reflecting the new society they're trying to build.

Once, he would have observed as much to Bashir, and Bashir… Well, likely he wouldn't have been particularly interested – he was never a great admirer of enigma tales, Garak had belatedly recalled – but he could have then segued onto more mutually engaging subjects, such as the changes in Cardassian law and justice system. From there, they might have wended their way through Garak's recent discussions with the Bajorans, through trials and extraditions, and maybe then found themselves at a place where Garak could divulge his tentatively held desire that Cardassia might, one day, be admitted to the Federation.

Bashir would have been insufferably smug to hear as much, but he'd doubtless be pleased, too.

But now he wouldn't be pleased, or triumphant. He wouldn't smile, or laugh, or tease. The admission would be nothing more than empty air, not even worth the breath Garak expended in speaking it.

Instead, he turns to the next page in his book, lowers his head, and reads on.

Or at least he attempts to. He attempts to say aloud, "Tale Seven: The Tower," but the words shatter in his mouth, falling from it in jagged pieces.

He coughs, hoping to clear his throat, but it only serves to intensify the sudden rawness there. It feels as though there are barbs catching hard against his tongue, anchoring it to the roof of his mouth, and that sensation makes it difficult to swallow the _kanar_ he turns to in order to quell it. But he persists, and by the time he's drained the glass, it's loosened sufficiently that he can continue.

The words are fragile still, and he has to move his lips around them so warily that they emerge sounding stiff and mechanical. He picks his way haltingly through the first three paragraphs of The Tower, but by the fourth his voice breaks again, and he has no choice but to pause for a while longer and regather himself.

Because if there _is_ any hope at all – no matter how slight – that the sound of his voice might help draw Bashir back, then it will take more than half a tale and another badly told, and definitely more time than he has latterly been able to scrape together.

Years ago, he would have forcibly carved the time out of each and every day, come what may, because it would have given such great pleasure to read to Bashir. He'd imagined as much many times, though both their setting and reading matter had been far more intimate. The memory of those fantasies is threadbare and somewhat motheaten now, after so long being packed away and seldom revisited, but still warmer than reality.

Because here, he and Bashir share nothing but silence, but there, they had shared _kanar_ , and laughter, and later—

Something strikes against Garak's left leg, the light impact startling him from his thoughts. He looks down to see Kukalaka staring back at him, paws reaching impotently skywards.

"I didn't know you were such a harsh critic," Garak says as he scoops Kukalaka from the floor. "I realise I haven't been performing at my best today, but there's no need to resort to physical violence."

Or perhaps it wasn't the bear who was the true critic.

Garak looks up again slowly, hope fluttering cautious wings in his chest, and even more slowly across to Bashir. But the man's expression is still placid, his posture unaltered, long limbs still loosely sprawled.

More than likely, then, Garak simply hadn't positioned Kukalaka securely enough, and it had been the work of gravity rather than any conscious act that had sent it flying.

He sighs, tucks Kukalaka into the safety offered by the crook of Bashir's elbow, and then takes hold of his hand, meaning to set it on the bear's head once more.

Bashir's skin is warmer to the touch than it usually is, and his palm is damp with sweat. Garak is certain that he would have been alerted if Bashir had taken ill and was running a fever, so concludes that their fast-approaching summer is the most credible cause. Temperatures are already climbing, and he makes a mental note to talk to the medical team about adjusting the room's environmental controls. He wants to provide Bashir with any comfort it is in his power to arrange.

With that in mind, he returns to his own chair and Sayak's book, and starts tale seven over again.


	3. Chapter 3

The nascence of summer has scorched the sky, the air is thin and parched and the sun is merciless, but Bashir's sickroom is a constant, wintry twenty-two degrees.

His medical team have questioned the wisdom of it and repeatedly pored over their charts and readouts looking for tell-tale evidence of distress in Bashir's vital signs, ignoring Garak's reassurances that the temperature is positively tropical for a human.

Perhaps even _too_ warm, because oftentimes Bashir's brow looks clammy, beads of sweat glistening at his hairline and outlining the curve of his top lip. Once, doubting himself _and_ the tick-tock bleeping of the monitoring equipment, Garak had taken light hold of Bashir's wrist and grazed his fingertips across the thin skin on the underside of it, gliding over the delicate peaks of fine bones and tendons to the pulse point at the heel of his palm. He could feel Bashir's heart beating there, a faint but regular, unhurried lub dub rhythm that suggested, despite any appearances to the contrary, that Bashir is as comfortable as his unfortunate circumstances will allow.

Garak is decidedly less so. The chill of the room reminds him of his time on Deep Space Nine, and how the ceaseless cold clawed at him. How it made his joints throb and his muscles ache, and how he had to smile through it all, pretending it wasn't yet one more torture wrought by his exile.

At least here, in his own residence and alone save for Bashir and the non-judgemental Kukalaka, there is no-one to fool. He can wrap up warm, chafe his hands, and, most importantly, wax lyrical about his hardship, which makes it a great deal easier to endure.

And spurred on by Parmak's mild and well-meaning admonishments, and no small measure of his own guilt, Garak has endured far more frequently of late. By standing firm against the increasingly strident demands on his time – turning down the most frivolous of the many invitations he is issued and curtailing meetings that threaten to overrun – and, though it pains him, occasionally postponing his postprandial games of _kotra_ with Parmak, he is able to snatch back enough time from his evenings that he is able to visit Bashir near every other day.

It's never for long, an hour or so at best, but sufficient that, by the start of the third week of this new schedule, he finally reaches the end of tale twelve, the last in Sayak's book.

The author has not included any parting thoughts addressed to the reader, and Garak cannot summon up any words that feel fitting for the moment, so he simply sets his padd aside, leans back in his chair, and waits. And waits, but there's nothing to reward his patience but the soft susurrus of Bashir's breathing, interweaving with the far harsher sound of his own.

It would have been foolish to have anticipated anything else, but as a cold, hard knot of sorrow forms in his heart, Garak has to admit that he had done so anyway.

A small part of him, largely unacknowledged before now, had really believed that Sayak's tales were the answer to Bashir's predicament. Through all the many days and weeks he had denied himself the enjoyment of reading them – the many days and weeks he had procrastinated and avoided visiting Bashir – postponing his pleasure until he could share it with his friend, he had imbued them with a significance they did not deserve and they had somehow become tangled up and entwined with Bashir's condition in his mind.

The book had become emblematic of Bashir's recovery; its conclusion synonymous with his reawakening.

Ridiculous, superstitious nonsense, and unbecoming of him, but still the disappointment remains.

Garak takes two days to reason himself out of the feeling, and two more to grieve, then diligently embarks on the task of selecting a new book to read to Bashir. It's a difficult one, fully demanding the many hours he sacrifices to it, even though he is able to discount more than half of his extensive library from the start.

Many years ago, Bashir had made his thoughts on the deficiencies of Cardassian novels very plain, and it seems somewhat unkind to subject him to another when he has no recourse for escape from it. Of the rest of his collection, not one of them _feels_ right, not in same way Sayak's book had done, and eventually Garak has to admit defeat, stop prevaricating, and beg Paramak's advice in the matter.

His answer is one Garak should have predicted, given that he's heard it so often since Bashir was ceded into his care: familiar is the watchword.

A human work, then, and preferably one that Bashir had already expressed a fondness for. That narrows the field significantly, and Garak finds himself drawn time and again to the same volume: a paper book, an antique, that had been presented to him during a visit to London when he was serving as Cardassian ambassador to the Federation.

He treasured the gift in the generous spirit it was given, and still does, but has hitherto hasn't felt equal to reading it. His memories of that visit are just too bittersweet.

He had liked the city, admired its architecture and the lingering scars of its history that were still written into its stones, but Bashir was never far from his thoughts no matter how deeply he tried to immerse himself in his sightseeing. As he walked London's streets, he couldn't help but wonder how Bashir felt about his birthplace; what his favourite parts of it were and what stories he might have to tell about them.

But Garak had never thought to ask about such things earlier in their acquaintance, and Bashir had never offered to tell, and by the time Garak was posted to Earth, it had seemed too late to pose the question. They had written to each other, even then, but their letters had become not only sporadic but flimsy and inconsequential, and Garak's curiosity seemed to have no place in them; doomed to go unsatisfied.

Thus, he cannot be certain that Bashir had liked London too, in his turn, but the setting there is at least familiar. Just as the stories themselves will be, if Garak's vague recollection that he had mentioned reading them as a young man is to be trusted.

He takes the book with him when he next manages to find the time to go upstairs to Bashir's room, and after he offers his customary, cheerful greeting to Kukalaka and seats himself in his customary chair, he opens it carefully, mindful of its cracked binding and fragile pages, and with mingled trepidation and hope, reads aloud:

"Adventure I: A Scandal in Bohemia."

No flicker of recognition mars the serenity of Bashir's expression as he hears the words, his breath does not catch and there is no mistaking the lax line of his lips for a smile. Garak shouldn't have expected any other outcome, but the disappointment still blooms anew in his chest once more.

Thereafter, everything continues in much the same way as it had before, though with Arthur Conan Doyle in place of Sayak. Garak reads, Bashir sweats, and Kukalaka takes the odd tumble whilst the days grow ever longer, the sun climbs towards its zenith, and summer settles over Cardassia in earnest, as heavy and suffocating as a pall.

Garak has almost resigned himself to this stultifying routine repeating itself for the foreseeable future – or in perpetuity, though that fear is reserved solely for sleepless nights, and quickly buried again come morning – when it's disrupted by a message he receives from Ezri Dax, requesting his permission to pay a visit to Bashir.


	4. Chapter 4

When Memory Alpha security found Bashir – broken, bloodied and hovering on the cusp of death – they also discovered a message he'd recorded in his gear. A last will and testament of sorts, and one that named Dax, O'Brien, and – shockingly – Garak himself as the only people left that Bashir felt he could trust.

But Garak has no doubts that he had been chosen as Bashir's caretaker solely because neither of the others had the means to provide for him in his current state. Dax had certainly seemed concerned that he was not prepared for the undertaking when she brought Bashir to him, and now she inspects every aspect of Bashir's room with insulting thoroughness: the biobed, the medical equipment, even the fresh flowers that Garak had placed at Bashir's bedside the previous day.

Garak elects to ignore her and carry on with his visit in the same way he would had she not accompanied him upon it.

To that end, his first task is, as ever, Kukalaka's relocation. No matter the many reminders he has sent to the nursing staff, it always finds its way back to the windowsill at some point during the day.

"Your citizenship continues apace," he says as he carries out the now-familiar process of settling the bear in its proper place. He doesn't even notice the dead weight of Bashir's arm when he lifts it anymore. "Soon, all that'll be required is your pawprint to make everything official. Then we will have to see about getting you some proper Cardassian attire. My tailoring skills may be a little rusty these days, but I'm sure I can rustle up something suitable. You're starting to fade from the sunlight here."

Garak runs a thumb over the rough fur on the top of the bear's head, which has already been bleached to a pale tan, and then looks up to find Dax staring at him with the same keen-eyed intensity she had subjected the rest of the room to. There is a pin-scratch furrow between her eyebrows, the beginnings of a frown. Clearly, she has seen something that displeases her.

"Is something wrong, Captain?" Garak asks with careful blandness. "I hope you haven't found anything lacking in the doctor's accommodations here. If you have, please let me know, and I will of course rectify it immediately."

Dax blinks sluggishly, as though awakening from a daze. "No. No, everything's fine. Perfect, really. I just…" She trails into silence, evidently unwilling to voice whatever criticism she'd prefer to make. Instead, she busies herself with rearranging Garak's chair, dragging it in front of Bashir's and close enough that their knees brush together when she seats herself in it.

Close enough to kiss, although, to Garak's relief, she does no such thing. She does angle her body towards him, but it is only to take hold of his hand, which she clutches between both of her own so tightly that the skin across her knuckles blanches.

Belatedly, Garak remembers to be polite. "Would you like me to leave?" he asks, begrudging every word. "Give you some privacy?"

Dax gives an almost imperceptible shake of her head, scarcely even an answer, but seemingly all the attention is able to spare him now, with every other speck of it taken up Bashir.

Garak cannot bear to watch them for long, and soon retreats to the window, where he leans back against the sill and concentrates his gaze on the thin sliver of Bashir's body that is still visible beyond the shielding form of Dax's: the harsh angle of his elbow, the curve of his shoulder, and the curling shell of one ear. Not a particularly illuminating view, but still preferable to the sight of Dax hungrily drinking Bashir in as though she's parched and he's the only water left in the sector.

An interminable while later, Dax breathes out a long, wavering sigh and then unleashes a torrent of words, spoken at such a rapid clip that they merge and blend into one another, each one scarcely indistinguishable from the next. She talks of her work on the _Aventine_ , of the difficulties of command, and likely much more besides, but eventually Garak closes his ears to all of it. He lets Dax's voice wash over him and his mind wanders in the resulting quiet, and, as often happens of late when he is left alone with his thoughts, they eventually circle round to his ongoing struggles with the Bajoran government and the ever-vexatious matter of war trials.

Minutes or even hours might have passed when Dax's sudden gasp brings him back to himself and the room and the moment.

"I think," she says, turning to regard him with eyes shocked round and wide, "his mouth might have moved."

A scalding rush of blood and bile shoots through Garak's body; his skin burns with it and his guts twist painfully tight. It's jealousy, and it sickens him. Any reaction on Bashir's part should be a joy, a blessing, never mind how or why it happened.

Even so, his teeth grit involuntarily, and he has to force his lips to stretch into a feigned smile around them, force enough air through them to say, "It did?"

"You didn't see?" Dax sounds unsure of herself now. "Well, it was only a little twitch; probably just a trick of the light. Or wishful thinking."

"If he's roused at all, then it should be obvious in the read-outs," Garak says. "I'll get one of his doctors to check them later."

"Thank you," Dax says, and though her smile does return, it's a tremulous thing now with none of the same heart behind it. Her words, too, seem to have deserted her for the time being, because she sighs again, and tells Bashir, "I've monopolised you for long enough today. I should let Garak have his turn."

She gives Bashir's hand one last squeeze, then gets to her feet and offers the chair to Garak, who returns it to its proper place before taking up his book.

"You're going to read to him?" Dax asks, and there's a note of surprise, perhaps even incredulity, in her voice that Garak doesn't much care for.

"Yes," he says sharply. "I do, most days."

He doesn't want her to think for a moment that he's been shirking his responsibilities when it comes to Bashir.

"And…? You're not going to say anything else?" Dax frowns. "You do talk to him, too, don't you, and not just the bear?"

Garak opens his mouth to protest that of course he does, but can't in good conscience continue any further than that. It's a pattern he'd never quite pieced together before, but Dax has the right of it. He cannot recall when he last addressed Bashir directly, though he suspects it might well have been months ago now.

"You should talk to him more," Dax says, but her tone is soft and there's no hint of a rebuke in it. "He needs to hear _you_ and not just your voice."  
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Dax stays on in Cardassia for two more days, and Garak leaves her to visit Bashir alone so that she can talk to him as freely and as much as she might like.

Though he asks it of himself of himself many times, how much _he_ should say to Bashir is a question that he can find no firm answer to, not until he returns to Bashir's room for the first time after Dax's departure and discovers she has left his chair pulled up close to Bashir's own.

It seems like a sign, and Garak does heed it, albeit with some caution.

He has tried avoid touching Bashir more than is strictly necessary, because, despite Garak's fervent wishes to the contrary, theirs was never a particularly physically demonstrative relationship, even at its height, and he had feared that Bashir might resent the intrusion however deeply buried he may be.

Though he doesn't crowd as close as Dax had, or let their legs press together, he does take loose hold of Bashir's hand, reasoning that the warmth and pressure might help to rouse some feelings in the man, even if they're negative. It feels impossibly light within his grasp; almost weightless.

He also looks at Bashir directly in the eye, something he has avoided just as assiduously. He hadn't even allowed his gaze to linger when Bashir came to him before he was injured, seeking his protection from Section 31. He'd been seething with barely-controlled jealously then, due to Sarina's presence at Bashir's side, and resentful that it had taken bare desperation to finally bring Bashir to Cardassia and Garak's door. He'd been certain that those emotions were writ far too clearly in his expression despite his best efforts at concealment, and hadn't wanted to give Bashir the opportunity to look at him too closely in return.

But now there is no risk of Bashir seeing anything Garak doesn't wish him to, and Garak can look as long as he likes.

The nurses, unused to caring for a human, are not as diligent at shaving Bashir's face as the man himself once was. He's currently sporting stubble long enough that it could almost be termed a short beard – one which Garak thinks accentuates the firm contour of his jaw very nicely – that is shot through with white hairs at the creases that bracket his mouth and the point of his chin. The hair on his head is fading to salt and pepper, too, and there are more lines gathered at the corners of his eyes, but they only serve to soften the shape of them, and do not obscure it. He wears the years well.

"I like this new look on you," Garak says. "Very distinguished."

Once, Bashir might have spluttered in indignity at the intimation that he was ageing, but now he simply stares through Garak. His eyes are empty windows, no hint of Garak's friend behind them, and the loss hits Garak as sharp as a punch to the solar plexus again, catching hard beneath his ribs.

But he doesn't let himself turn away this time. He makes himself look, and he makes himself talk, even though, in his despair, he can't think of a single thing to say that's worth listening to.

He mouths banalities, chatters mindlessly about the events of his day, and though it's not likely to be intriguing enough to encourage Bashir back to himself, it is at least a start.


	5. Chapter 5

Bashir's hair, like his beard, has been neglected of late. It's shaggy and overlong, spilling over his damp forehead in sweat-sharpened clumps, the curling ends of which tangle with his lashes whenever he blinks.

Garak wants to sweep them back, tuck them safe and secure behind Bashir's ears, but he tamps the urge down firmly because Bashir would doubtless shy away from the intimacy of that sort of gesture were he awake and able to voice his opinion on the matter.

His fingers still tingle with the desire to touch, so he takes loose hold of one of Bashir's hands and allows himself the small indulgence of running the pad of his thumb across the peaks and troughs of Bashir's knuckles once – one, two, three, four – and then back again – four, three, two, one – before settling it to rest inside the shallow cup of Bashir's palm.

For a time, he sits and just looks at his friend, searching his face for any hint of a change that he could fool himself into believing is a mark of improvement. But there is – as there always is – nothing. Bashir's gaze is still vacant; his chapped lips still slack and immobile, held slightly parted as though caught on the cusp of forming a word Garak knows he will never speak.

Garak screws his eyes closed and takes a long breath in, holding it tight in his chest until his ribs begin to ache. Then he sighs out his frustration, plasters on a smile, and starts talking.

There is very little to say that he did not say yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that, but Garak persists, regardless, recounting the minutiae of his day's meetings in mind-numbing detail, and, in desperation, every move and countermove of the last game of _kotra_ he played with Parmak.

He even bores himself, so it comes as no surprise when Bashir does not rouse into sudden life and beg him to continue when Garak eventually exhausts his supply of meaningless blather and falters into silence once more.

That is, of course, a fresh disappointment, but Garak doesn't feel it quite as deeply as all of the others, as he can't help but think that he is largely to blame for it, for following the letter of Dax's advice and not the spirit.

The man talking to Bashir is not _him_ ; no version of Elim Garak that Bashir would recognise.

He is not the Garak who would wax philosophical over their lunches, or even the occasional correspondent of later years, so verbose that he once sent an unasked-for novel in response to a polite enquiry about his life in Cardassia after the war. He is neither of those men anymore, and he doesn't know if he's capable of pretending to be them again.

He isn't certain that Bashir would want him to do so, either. Despite the blatant, unabashed curiosity about Garak's past he'd displayed at the start of their acquaintance, his response to the life story Garak chose to share with him – so long delayed that Garak had wondered if he'd finally managed to scare the man off entirely – was a muted one, thanking him for the confidence but little more.

There were none of questions Garak had expected – probing for more details, more explanations, or simply just _more_ – nor any sign that Bashir had reached the revelations upon reading Garak's own account of their time together on Deep Space Nine that Garak had both longed for and dreaded in equal measures.

That lukewarm missive put paid to any hopes Garak had entertained that opening himself up in such a way might help to rekindle some faint spark of their old closeness, and – fighting against his own discouragement and pique in every line – he had replied to it in kind.

It set the tone for the rest of their communications over the years that followed, and although Garak eventually grew comfortable enough to share his anxieties over Cardassia's future with Bashir, to ask for his advice on his own political ambitions, he was careful not to stray too far into more personal territory. It was a distance Bashir seemed content to maintain as he did not attempt to bridge it either in his writing or in space, ignoring Garak's oft-repeated invitations to visit until the very last moment when circumstances grew dire enough to force his hand.

And that distance has reduced them to strangers in a way, despite the many thousands of words they have exchanged in their time apart, and Garak can no more confide in him his private thoughts and fears – no matter that they sit closest to the tip of his tongue whenever they hold these one-sided conversations together – than he can recreate those light-hearted barbs they once traded in the Replimat. Such conversational jousting requires an opponent, after all, and Garak has neither the strength nor the will to tilt at windmills.

Thus constrained, he has no recourse but to turn to Sherlock Holmes again to talk for him, and, disheartened, he disentangles his fingers from Bashir's and reaches for the book. Bashir's hand remains suspended in the air for a moment afterwards, as though waiting for Garak to take it up again, and then slowly falls to rest in its usual open-palmed splay against his thigh once more when he does not.

The first time this happened, Garak had rushed to fetch a doctor, thinking it proof of a deliberate action on Bashir's part, but for all the doctor's subsequent poking, prodding, and tests, she couldn't find any evidence of such a thing. Simple inertia had been her final diagnosis, and though Garak had been unsatisfied with it at the time, it does seem to have been the correct one, as Bashir has shown no trace of conscious thought otherwise.

So he ignores the movement, and settles down to read, "Adventure V: The Five Orange Pips."

It isn't his finest performance, and he loses his place on the page several times as his mind wanders away from it to circle endlessly and uselessly around his equally poor attempt at conversation earlier.

He is no closer to a solution at the end of the story, nor by the end of the evening, when his growing irritation over his failures renders him very poor company for Parmak, too.

Parmak bears his snappish temper with his usual long-suffering forbearance, and doesn't press Garak to explain himself, which Garak is thankful for. He has turned to Parmak to make his decisions about Bashir far too often of late, and he fears his friend may soon come to the end of his plentiful supply of patience on that score.

Although Parmak had never rebuked him for it, Garak is acutely aware of how badly he had started to neglect their friendship at the beginning of Bashir's stay, when he was so wrapped up in his worries – and his attempts at evading them – that he had little time or energy to spare for anything else.

Nonetheless, Garak must unthinkingly make a complaint that is too pointed, or else Parmak is perspicacious enough that the exact, angry set of his shoulders or depth of his frown gave him away, as his guess as to the source of Garak's foul mood – softly spoken just before they are due to part company for the night – is so close to the root of the issue that Garak feels he has no choice but to confess to the whole of it.

Parmak listens to him in thoughtful silence, and then suggests, "You've written him so many letters you'll never send these past few months, why don't you read them to him?"

Garak's immediate instinct is to reject the idea, because, knowing that they'd likely never be read by their supposed recipient, he had stated himself more plainly than had become his habit. Plain, but not forthright; those letters contain many things he had wished at the time he could say to Bashir, if not all of them, as the form had still constrained him. In that space between the two, though, he can perhaps find the happy medium he has been searching for.

"I'll think about it," he says instead, resolving to transfer the letters to a padd as soon as he retires to his room.


	6. Chapter 6

With summer at its height, nothing is blooming save for the hardiest desert plants, whose broad, fleshy flowers stink like rotten carrion. Hardly suitable decoration for a sickroom, and the vase at Bashir's bedside has perforce remained empty of late.

It's evidence of yet another small failure on Garak's part, and it has nagged at him. Like as not, Bashir had no more appreciated the flowers than Kukalaka did, but Garak had certainly felt the lack of them; missed the bright splash of colour and faint perfumed tang they had lent to the otherwise sterile space.

He has been working on a replacement for several days, and though he is still not entirely pleased with his handiwork – nor is he ever likely to be – he's at least satisfied enough that he is no longer embarrassed at the thought of presenting it to Bashir.

"Here," he says, placing the wide, shallow bowl on Bashir's lap, "I've brought you a gift."

He settles one of Bashir's hands against the outside of the bowl, and then gently presses down on the back of Bashir's fingers until they're forced to bend and his palm consequently moulds to fit the soft curve of the ceramic. He hopes that somewhere deep, deep inside, Bashir is able to experience the texture of it.

The bowl had been made by hand, the old-fashioned way, by one of the few remaining practitioners of that moribund art who still reside in the Tor district. The glaze is uneven in parts, cracked in others, and Garak thinks it all the more beautiful for those imperfections, which no replicator would ever be able to copy.

"It's a rock garden," he continues, lifting Bashir's hand so that it is held suspended over the bowl and his dangling fingertips brush against the stones held within. "Or my best approximation of one. There are many of them in the city, because so little is able to grow here."

The greater part of the miniature garden consists of grey-green, water-smoothed pebbles, among which are scattered vivid blue and red semi-precious stones, the whole intended to ape a flowery meadow. It is bisected by a river of sparkling, clear crystals, and on that river's far bank, Garak has set eight jagged shards of black volcanic rock, standing upright in a rough circle.

He had seen similar arrangements of stones during his time on Earth, and while Garak hadn't been able to discern any special meaning in the pattern himself, he had wondered whether a human might.

Clearly not, as Bashir shows no more reaction when Garak guides his hand to touch them than he had with any of the other stones.

Before he has chance to feel disheartened, Garak busies himself with the task of relocating the rock garden to a more permanent home on the windowsill. For a wonder, he doesn't have to move Kukalaka in order to do so, as the bear has already been placed in its proper place, nestled close against Bashir's side. A sign, perhaps, that Garak has finally won a victory in his ongoing struggles with the nursing staff, if nothing else.

Garak turns from the window, picks up the padd he had carelessly thrown atop Bashir's biobed when he entered the room, and then he hesitates, suddenly uncertain that he wants to continue.

While he was engrossed in the creation of Bashir's garden, it was easy to ignore his doubts whenever they threatened to seep through the edges of his thoughts, but now faced with the imminent reality of reading his letters to Bashir, he hesitates.

Still, he had anticipated his own cowardice and deliberately cut himself off from his one avenue of escape. He'd left the book behind in his room and now has no choice but to continue, or else subject Bashir to yet another dull account of the intricate details of Cardassian bureaucracy.

That does remain a tantalising alternative, but ultimately an unkind one, perhaps even bordering on cruelty.

He sits himself down, takes up Bashir's hand, and tells him, "I've continued to write to you. I thought I'd be a very poor correspondent if I didn't."

Which is a lie, but one Garak had told himself as well as Bashir. In truth, he can admit now that the letters had been an exercise in the same denial and self-delusion he had so often indulged in since this sad, sorry state of affairs began.

As he was writing, he could pretend that he really did intend to send the letters once they were finished, and that they would then find their way to some fictional version of Bashir light years distant. The version of Bashir he stubbornly clung to in his mind while the real Bashir mouldered away in solitude, two storeys above his head.

Garak turns on the padd, scrolls to the start of the first letter, and reads, "My dear doctor—"

It has been a long time since he said those words aloud, and they feel strangely uncomfortable in his mouth, unfurl awkwardly from his tongue. The rest of the letter proves just as difficult to read, and Garak has to pick through it slowly and cautiously, fighting against his inclination to give in and give up at the end of every line.

He had written it the day after Dax left Bashir in his care and his sorrow was so heavy and all-encompassing that it felt almost palpable; a bitterness that kept rising at the back of his throat and threatened to choke him.

Although it did nothing but bring him fresh pain, he couldn't help but dwell upon how different Bashir's first visit to Cardassia Prime would be to the one he had once imagined for them. That fantasy, the one he had turned to so often during the early days of his exile when, likewise, his despair sometimes felt like a burden too great to bear, he now describes to Bashir: the tour they would have taken of the capital, the _gelat_ they would have shared, and the trip they would have made into the country, to admire the stark and dangerous beauty of the wilderness there.

It was a pipe dream, because the Cardassia Garak returned to was not the one he left. That Cardassia no longer existed, and all that remained of it were smoke and debris and the dead.

In the letter, he tells Bashir that he was glad that he had not visited then and seen Garak's world at its lowest and most wretched, but that is a lie as great as any other he has ever told the man. It was nothing more than a sop to Garak's pride; a salve to Bashir's conscience. Even here, in this missive that was never meant to be seen by any eyes but his own, he cannot make himself plain when it comes to Bashir.

It's a long-standing affliction, and one that irritates him now, for persisting even though he has never before been in a better position to speak his mind without fear of interruption or the need for obfuscation.

"I _did_ want you to come then, Doctor," he finds himself saying without intending to. However, the words feel right – they sound right – so he allows himself to continue. "More than that, I expected you to. What better place to practice 'frontier medicine' that in the ruins of my once-great city?

"I did tell you that I volunteered with an emergency med unit, didn't I? And every time the Federation sent a delegation of their people to aid us, I was looking for your face amongst them. But you never came. In your letters to me, you complained of feeling stifled on Deep Space Nine, that you might as well be a doctor serving on one of the core worlds, you still never accepted one of my invitations, even when we needed you.

"No, you stayed away until you needed something that only I could give you, and then you had the temerity—"

Garak hadn't realised how much the volume and pitch of his voice had risen until it breaks, and the resulting silence rings.

He breathes slowly and deeply until the racing beat of his heart slows and full awareness of his own body returns. With it, comes the realisation that he is clasping Bashir's hand so tightly that his knuckles have begun to ache from the force of it.

He loosens his grip, but the memory of it still lingers as the crescent-moon imprints of his fingernails are bitten into Bashir's skin.

The sight of them both sickens and shames him, and Garak drops Bashir's hand and springs to his feet so quickly and violently that he almost upsets his chair.

"That's enough for tonight, I think," he says to the air above Bashir's head, carefully keeping his gaze averted to avoid looking him in the eye. "You need your rest. I'll come and see you again tomorrow."

When, he promises himself, he will endeavour to keep a much better hold on his tongue.


End file.
